United is offering a 25% bonus on transfers of hotel and car rental points into MileagePlus miles. The offer is valid for up to 20,000 bonus miles on transfers made through November 30, 2013.
United’s hotel and car transfer partners are here.
This bonus helps the anemic transfer rates for Starpoints to United miles (40,000 Starpoints normally yield 25,000 miles but would get you 31,250 under this offer), and Marriott transfer rates have improved slightly with the new United-Marriott tie up announced in July.
Nonetheless, this offer doesn’t really tempt me. At 100% bonus I’d even be moving over my Hyatt points which I much value and possibly Starpoints as well (since it would make Starwood transfers to United as generous as to American and US Airways). But 25% won’t move the needle for me. Will you jump on it?
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Combined with Wyndham’s currently running 20% bonus on buying points and converting to United means you can buy 8400 Wyndham for $77 (the minimum block you need to convert to airline miles) and get 4000 United miles (8000 Wyndham = 3200 UA at normal rate + 25% bonus of 800) with 400 Wyndham left over.
The first sweet spot is at 25K Wyndham points which yields a 5K Wyndham bonus, qualifying for 15K UA miles (12K plus a 3K bonus) for $275 with no Wyndham points left over.
That means you can get UA miles as low as 1.833 cents per mile. The threshold 8400 level is 1.925. Not as great, of course, as the Daily Getaways yield but worth looking at.
I assume that this can be combined with Marriott travel packages. If so not bad, 200k Marriott gets 7 night stay at a Cat5(25k per night) + almost 69k UA miles
I am Marriott Rewards points rich, and UA points poor…
112,500 MR points for 62,500 UA miles is making me thing about it…
If you value a Marriott point at 0.8 cents, you’re paying around 1.5 cents for the UA mile which really isn’t bad.
Not bad if you have straggler points that you don’t plan on using. I will probably transfer over my leftover miles from the Chase Marriott card. I don’t see myself finding a value for ~11k Marriott points anytime in the future, but 2500 UA miles means 2500 less UR miles I’d have to transfer for my next international flight.
I read it wrong, thought it had to be 5,000 car/hotel miles transferred. Not 5,000 UA miles earned
Been wondering what to do with Marriotts I have hanging around. 168K transferred gives 93.75K UA
what about ultimate rewards do they transfer ?
I purchased 75k Wyndham points with the intention of ultimately converting them to miles when a promotion like this came up. In the process of transferring, I noticed that the T&C on United specify that only transfers of 5,000 miles or greater will earn bonus miles. Wyndham allows transfers of 5,000->3,200, 17,500->7,000, and 30,000-> 12,000. Originally, I intended to transfer 2 x 17,500 and 5 x 8,000. However, now it seems that if I were to stick to that plan I would only receive the bonus on the 2 transfers of 17,500. Any ideas of the best way to execute this transaction? Thanks
Jon- Only the combined total (of all transfers) needs to be at least 5000 miles.
I had 4,000 Wyndham points laying around that I was never going to use, so it made sense to top off my account (with the 20% bonus) and transfer to united. I used my mileageplus card to buy the points, so I figure 15,242 at 1.58 c/m is not a bad deal, especially considering I have an award flight in mind.
Dear FF Members,
This is my first time transfering Wyndham Hotel Points to United and I’m concerned bout the wording in the fine print at #3 and #4 which I included below. Do I understand it correctly that I won’t get any bonus if the total bonus won’t reach 5,000 miles. Example 32,000 Wyndham points are converted to 12,800 United miles and 25% bonus for 12,800 UA miles is 3,200 UA miles, which is under 5,000 required minimum, meaning that I wouldn’t get them according to the terms of this promotion. Please, share your opinion. THANKS A LOT !!!
3. Qualifying Activity: A member must earn a combined minimum of 5,000 award miles as a result of one or more points to miles conversion transactions from any combination of MileagePlus hotel and car rental partner programs that are completed during the Promotional Period (“Qualifying Activity”) in order to qualify for MileagePlus Hotel Points-to-Miles bonus miles (“Bonus Miles”).
4. Bonus Miles will be credited into the member’s account on or before January 31, 2013. No Bonus Miles will be awarded if total Award Miles earned by such member from car rental and hotel points converted during the Promotional Period is less than 5,000. The maximum bonus miles that can be earned by a member under this promotion is 20,000. Note that only miles that actually post to a member’s account during the Promotional Period will qualify for purposes of the bonus miles calculation.